Anna Karenina eBook

All this time he had two distinct spiritual conditions.
One was away from her, with the doctor, who kept
smoking one fat cigarette after another and extinguishing
them on the edge of a full ash tray, with Dolly, and
with the old prince, where there was talk about dinner,
about politics, about Marya Petrovna’s illness,
and where Levin suddenly forgot for a minute what was
happening, and felt as though he had waked up from
sleep; the other was in her presence, at her pillow,
where his heart seemed breaking and still did not
break from sympathetic suffering, and he prayed to
God without ceasing. And every time he was brought
back from a moment of oblivion by a scream reaching
him from the bedroom, he fell into the same strange
terror that had come upon him the first minute.
Every time he heard a shriek, he jumped up, ran to
justify himself, remembered on the way that he was
not to blame, and he longed to defend her, to help
her. But as he looked at her, he saw again that
help was impossible, and he was filled with terror
and prayed: “Lord, have mercy on us, and
help us!” And as time went on, both these conditions
became more intense; the calmer he became away from
her, completely forgetting her, the more agonizing
became both her sufferings and his feeling of helplessness
before them. He jumped up, would have liked
to run away, but ran to her.

Sometimes, when again and again she called upon him,
he blamed her; but seeing her patient, smiling face,
and hearing the words, “I am worrying you,”
he threw the blame on God; but thinking of God, at
once he fell to beseeching God to forgive him and have
mercy.

He did not know whether it was late or early.
The candles had all burned out. Dolly had just
been in the study and had suggested to the doctor
that he should lie down. Levin sat listening
to the doctor’s stories of a quack mesmerizer
and looking at the ashes of his cigarette. There
had been a period of repose, and he had sunk into
oblivion. He had completely forgotten what was
going on now. He heard the doctor’s chat
and understood it. Suddenly there came an unearthly
shriek. The shriek was so awful that Levin did
not even jump up, but holding his breath, gazed in
terrified inquiry at the doctor. The doctor
put his head on one side, listened, and smiled approvingly.
Everything was so extraordinary that nothing could
strike Levin as strange. “I suppose it
must be so,” he thought, and still sat where
he was. Whose scream was this? He jumped
up, ran on tiptoe to the bedroom, edged round Lizaveta
Petrovna and the princess, and took up his position
at Kitty’s pillow. The scream had subsided,
but there was some change now. What it was he
did not see and did not comprehend, and he had no
wish to see or comprehend. But he saw it by
the face of Lizaveta Petrovna. Lizaveta Petrovna’s
face was stern and pale, and still as resolute, though
her jaws were twitching, and her eyes were fixed intently
on Kitty. Kitty’s swollen and agonized
face, a tress of hair clinging to her moist brow,
was turned to him and sought his eyes. Her lifted
hands asked for his hands. Clutching his chill
hands in her moist ones, she began squeezing them to
her face.